


fragments

by Nightblaze



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Multi, how the hell do people tag oneshot collections?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 09:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24348817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightblaze/pseuds/Nightblaze
Summary: little pieces of time
Comments: 10
Kudos: 15





	1. prophecies

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes life is just getting back into a fandom after 4 years and deciding that you will write for it even though you have several unfinished works for other fandoms sitting in your google docs. anyway!

Mike’s gunshot was still ringing in her ears.

It was supposed to be a fun night. It wasn’t going to be  _ great,  _ by any means, Ashley knew that. She knew that nothing about coming back here was going to be easy, but  _ oh my God. _

First it had been Josh, and maybe that wasn’t real but Chris’ voice apologizing to her  _ was _ , and so was the absolute, all-encompassing fear that she was going to be torn in half by this saw, and then the blood…

After that it was the gun. Ashley had thought she could do it, thought she could be strong for Chris, wanted to be the heroine that she read about in novels… The barrel of the gun, a dark eye staring her down, and suddenly there was ice in her veins and betrayal in her heart. For half of a second, sitting there in the pitch black silence, Ashley almost believed she was dead. That Chris had truly killed her.

She sat by the door, watching with a distant gaze. She thought of blonde hair, blue eyes, a goofy smile and all she felt was fear and ice. Ashley stood when Chris came sprinting down the lawn. He pounded at the door, confusion in his voice. Ash looked him dead in the eye as the monster grabbed him from behind and tore him apart. It felt like control. It felt like power.

Ashley was alone with Emily’s corpse. Sam was off trying to play hero for Mike, who was off trying to play hero for everyone else. She sat on the opposite side of the room as Emily with her legs drawn up to her chest and she traced the spatter of blood on the corkboard behind Em’s unmoving head with her eyes.

Maybe it  _ had  _ been Jessica down those winding tunnels, but Ashley had read the journal. She didn’t even consider it. She wasn’t going to lose her life for the off chance that Mike had been wrong about Jess’ death. She didn’t even send out a mental apology.

She just wanted to keep herself safe. Maybe that made her selfish, but no-one else had to know about that. Nobody had to know about Chris screaming for her help on the other side of the door, and nobody had to know about what she had discovered in the stranger’s journal. They’d turn against her if they knew, just like she had turned against Chris and Emily and Jessica, but it was to  _ protect herself, _ couldn’t they understand?

Ashley wondered if Emily felt the same way she had in those precious moments before her death. The image of somebody she loved, who she thought loved her, pointing a gun right at her head. It was burned into Ashley’s mind. It was the last thing Emily had ever seen and now her remaining eye stared at the ceiling and her mouth hung open and Ashley had never been more certain there wasn’t a God up in the sky watching over them.

She sat there for what could have been seconds or could have been millennia. Then the monsters started screaming, and she started running and hoping that Em’s body would distract them long enough for her to get away. Sam and Mike showed up, somehow looking even worse than before. There was a gas leak, there was the crunch of a lightbulb breaking.

She stood still. Mike took a thrashing to protect Sam.

She  _ tried  _ to stand so  _ fucking  _ still. She couldn’t. Sam fell onto the ground, eyes rolling up into her head as the blood pooled around her abdomen.

Ashley ran. 

Mike was grinning as he went up in flame.

The snow was even more freezing up against the inferno of the lodge. Ashley stared into the fire, barely noticed the screaming spirits around her, barely noticed the whirring of the helicopters.

There was nobody else at the police station with her.

Vaguely, she recalled sitting against the walls of the basement, staring at Emily’s body and thinking,  _ I am going to get off of this mountain even if it kills me.  _ And then, she amended,  _ I am going to get off of this mountain even if it kills everyone around me. _

Funny. Some prophecies do come true.


	2. regret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> canon timeline, Chris tried to save Josh and then tried to sacrifice Ashley.
> 
> While Chris and Mike take Josh out to the shed, Ashley and Sam talk.

It’s almost a moment of peace.

Well, nothing about  _ anything  _ is actually  _ peaceful,  _ because there’s blood soaked into Ashley’s clothes, red rope burns on her wrists, her heart is still hammering in her chest and her mind is going one hundred miles a minute.

Ashley stabbed the killer, but Josh was the killer. The killer had traumatized them, but Josh was the killer. Josh was sawed in half,  _ but Josh was the killer. _

But Ashley and Sam are sitting quietly on the couch, and in the moment there is no danger. All of that’s past now, even if Ash is still on edge. She wants to change out of her clothes but there’s no way in the darkest pits of Hell that she can be by herself right now and she can’t find it within herself to ask Sam to go with her. The perks of always being anxious, even with someone who she would consider one of her closest friends.

The thing about Sam is that she’s perfect. Sam warned them against the prank last year. Sam was the one who helped Josh through his grief, or tried to. Even before all of that, Sam was the one who somebody could call at three in the morning because they were out of ibuprofen and their period cramps had been keeping them awake and their mom was out of town, so could she please go pick some up, they would pay her back later. Not that Ashley is speaking from experience or anything.

“Ash, are you okay?” Ashley’s head whips upward and she stares at Sam, who blinks at her with concern in her eyes. It’s such a Sam thing to do that everything feels normal for just a second.

“I’m fine,” Ashley tells her in a tone that even disappoints herself. Certainly it wasn’t the voice of someone who was fine, and she had never been a good liar.

The thing about  _ Ashley  _ is that she’s a terrible person, and she doesn’t just think that because she’s self deprecating. Ashley had been complicit in the prank that had caused this mess. Ashley’s honest because she can’t lie to save her life. All that she does is take advantage of people and take their love that she doesn’t deserve and take and take and take… Ashley is scared and she is full of conflicting emotions (bitterness and affection, love but something cold and dark that horrifies even herself).

“Chris tried to shoot me,” she says suddenly.

“What do you mean?” Sam replies, ever-patient, and Ashley bites back a sharp response because nobody can know that she’s a terrible person. That’s the only secret she can keep.

“The killer… um, Josh, he said that Chris had to shoot himself or shoot me or we would both die. He tried to sacrifice me.”

Sam gazes at her with pity and Ashley wants to cry because she’s so  _ angry  _ and full of  _ hate  _ when she knows that if she had been in his shoes, she probably would have tried to shoot him, too, so she doesn’t deserve the pity. She’s all out of tears, though, and Sam is talking, anyway.

“He was scared, Ashley. You can’t blame him for that, can you? It was a heat of the moment thing.”

_ I was scared,  _ Ashley wants to scream.  _ I was scared! Why doesn’t it matter that  _ I  _ was scared?  _ Instead, she says bitterly, “And in the shed, too. He wanted to choose Josh over me.” Sam is quiet for a moment and Ashley isn’t sure what she wants from the poor blonde, but it definitely isn’t silence, so she keeps talking. “And I guess I can’t blame him for that, either, but oh my God, I thought I was going to  _ die,  _ Sam, twice! I should be dead right now.”

Sam moves to sit next to her and takes her hand in what’s supposed to be a comforting gesture but it makes Ashley’s skin crawl. “You were never really going to get hurt. It was just Josh’s sick prank.”

“I  _ know _ ,” she snaps and pulls her hand away quickly. “But I  _ thought  _ I was and so did Chris! He was going to kill me! It wasn’t a game!” Sam just looks tired and Ashley decides to stop trying to make her understand. She takes a deep breath before she says anything she’ll really regret, and continues, “I’m sorry. It was just a lot and God, I’m so shaken up.”

“No, I’m sorry.” Ashley looks up at Sam as she speaks, surprised. “You’ve got a right to be pissed at him.”  _ Pissed  _ doesn’t even begin to describe the terrible feeling in her stomach, but it’s something. “But what would you have done?”

Then Chris is back, and Ashley can’t say anything because anything she says will be horrible, horrible, horrible words. She can’t let out the truth. She just has to keep pretending to be a good person and when this shitty weekend is over, she’ll go home and she will forget everything about Chris and Josh, and about the black eye and the blood that stains her clothes. She’s gone her whole life acting like she’s good, so how hard can a few more days be, right?

It’s vile and appalling, but watching Chris’s face contort in confusion as she backs away from the door is satisfying. Ashley imagines herself with the gun this time, and she doesn’t hesitate to aim it towards him. She knows he would do the same, time and time and time again. But she doesn’t tell the rest of the group about this.

The rest of them make it off the mountain. Ashley may be traumatized, but she doesn’t feel empty. She wipes away every trace of Chris from her life. She deletes his number, all of their photos together, throws out the teddy bear he won her at a festival a couple years ago.

(Sometimes, Ashley catches Sam watching her. She thinks that she might know the truth about what happened. She only goes to Chris’s funeral because that’s the last damning piece of evidence Sam would need to piece it together. She’s smart like that.)

Ashley fills the gap that Chris left with other boys, and then other men. She never tells them anything. She spends the rest of her life keeping up the facade of a good person.

She doesn’t feel any regret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god i love ashley. i dont think shes a terrible person, but i think that she would absolutely believe that she is. this is specifically a callout to everyone who thinks that she's The Absolute Worst for not opening the door for Chris. shes traumatized and scared!!


	3. the tragedy of linear time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> canon timeline, Sam reflects on her relationship with Beth after Emily reveals that she found her head in the mines.

Sam thought that this nightmare of a night was over. Turns out, she couldn’t have been more wrong.

Emily came bursting through the door, babbling about some monster chasing her, about how she thought Matt was dead -  _ Matt and Jess were dead, how could they be dead? _ \- and everything was going to shit again.

“...I found Beth’s head,” Emily was saying and Chris and Ashley responded accordingly but Sam’s mind just froze.

Sam knew that the twins were dead. There was no way that they could survive by themselves for a whole year without being found. It was the only logical explanation. But having real proof, Beth’s goddamn  _ head,  _ was something else entirely. Deep down Sam had still been hoping that they had miraculously lived, and ran off to start a new life in Canada away from their shitty friends.

Away from Sam.

“Are you serious?” Sam asked once she had found her voice again.

_ “Yes,  _ I’m serious,” Emily snapped. Sam let out a shaky breath.

Hannah had been a constant in Sam’s life, a grounding force in that she never changed. But Beth… Beth was like the sun. Volatile but beautiful. Blinding but warm. Like electricity, dangerous and exciting. And now her fucking head was down in the mines, rotting away.

Their relationship had never really flourished. The spark was there, and they had both known it, and shied away from it. They had stayed away from each other because they couldn’t do that to Hannah. But now, knowing that Beth was gone forever? Sam would give anything to go back.

She would go back to a weekend she had gone camping with the Washingtons, when she and Beth were the only ones still awake, watching the campfire smolder, stealing glances at each other. Sam saw the light of the embers reflected in Beth’s eyes and thought that her heart would burst.

She would go back to one of their late-night slushie runs, which had started out as one impromptu trip to a gas station at two in the morning but eventually turned into a regular occurrence. It had been their secret, something almost sacred to them. Beth’s devious smile every time they snuck out had always taken Sam’s breath away.

She would go back to Josh’s eighteenth birthday party when they were playing Seven Minutes in Heaven like the stupid teenagers they were, and she and Beth had been stuck in the closet together. The air had been heavy with the words that they couldn’t say and the butterflies in Sam’s stomach had felt more like sparrows.

Sam would go back and she would kiss her. Beth’s lips would taste like the chocolate from s’mores, or the sickly sweet of blue raspberry, or cheap beer and birthday cake. They would’ve said to hell with expectations and judgements and taken their happiness into their own hands, and even if Beth still disappeared on that cold February night, Sam wouldn’t have had to wonder about all of the what-ifs and could-have-beens.

But that was the tragedy of linear time.


End file.
